Sometimes I really wonder if I know where I'm going and what I'm doing. The collegiate life is just so pointless sometimes. It's funny that I'm starting to irrationally, unreasonably, hate the smallest and most random things. Like the way that every third computer is always broken in the computer labs. Like the way that no door in the entire college opens or closes right. Like the lack of sound proofing in the Psychology building, where the loud, constant echoes of footsteps in the main corridor penetrates into every classroom. Like the cramped inadequacy of the dining hall. Like the all nighters one must occasionally pull, where there's always that group loudly talking or giggling on one side of you while on the other side is someone banging and cursing at their uncooperative computer while you try not to fall asleep in the middle of piecing together your thesis. I find it so absurd that I laugh myself into tears, into sobs.
And then there's always the invisible presence of my parents nearby, saying what on Earth are you doing still at that $20,000-a-year school and not having a major? And I ask myself whether I chose to go to college or whether I was bullied into accepting the "privilege".
"The job-market, dwindling even for the educated, is still only survived with a degree.... The only reasonable chance at a salary fit to survive on is getting a degree.... Come, come, you must support yourself soon.... That's what your degree is for...."
That word "degree" gets flung into the face every few seconds, and the insulting, slap-across "generation X" even more often. Those so-called shows about "young adults" and the MTV generation are so fake, so sick. The writers script us like we've got TIME to spend every night in a dance-club and to regularly plot to steal each other's boyfriends. Like we've got MONEY to own cars and go about made-up and dressed up like magazine-cover supermodels. Like we're so multi-talented and up to date that we can, all at once, keep a 4.0 average, find a solution to the national debt on the internet, rescue the baby seals with a rap song, lead a political rally on a pimple cream issue, and do a massively awesome stint in a touring rock-n-roll band--all the while condescending now and then to coolly give our parents a deprecating reminder that they're still far from hip. We've never had so many expectations upon us, we've never been so wildly misjudged as a separate species of person from the entire race that's gone before. It's unreal, this limbo of life we're floating in. This hesitating place where we stand around for an interminable time wondering what to do. There's this place on the edge, and then, out there, as far as the eye can see, the infinite stretch of terrifying obstacles and bleak landmarks intimating just what it is we're stepping into. And it's always the same question: what do you want to DO with your life?, as if somehow I'm supposed to face this chasm of choices and know MY LIFE in a split-second.
And I think: college? An elitist invention of the twelfth century for those whose lives would always be study, either clerical or aristocratic secular. And I think: trade guilds, apprenticeships, trial-and-error self teaching. These are the things of the nuts and bolts, this is where it used to really happen. People used to just take off one day from their parents' house when it was too crowded, and perhaps return one day years later to say that they've made it. People used to drift, find mentors, explore, stumble across something. Where were the college majors then? Where were the resumes? People tried you out. You tried jobs out. You tried lifestyles, you tried your self on for size, and no one stood tapping at your shoulder asking you, Why's it taking you so long? And it used to be that you alone could feel responsible for yourself, that you could scrape by in unbelievable poverty for however long and still at least have the dignity of not having your parents standing somewhere in the back superfluously reminding you that you're doing something less than success. "As long as you worry us with this half accomplishment, we'll worry you...." As if they have forgotten that it takes stages, that we're supposed to have some time off-anchor when we can earn our own self-respect before we have to start proving ourselves to anyone else. When we can live or die as it might turn out, and it's only our single fault, our toss of the dice. And I think of the pressure that money and time exerts when they're squeezed this way by the sense of debt, by the sense of being financially tied still to our parents at a ridiculous age in our life, by knowing we've got no alternative since our parents keep up with the statistics and show us the proofs that the modern world is a stark division between college grads and bums. But meanwhile, we're just a little bit suspicious.... we're just a little bit uneasy about the rigidity of the formula. If it weren't so fast, if we could have just a few less people to answer to.... This is the sort of thing we're called ungrateful for, that we can't quite explain satisfactorily. We want to get ourselves gone, but we don't want to do it this way. "This way?" they ask, finding us exasperatingly picky: "What's wrong with this? Where's the irrevocable cliff you say you're being pushed off of?" And I know I go too far sometimes, but I still worry. Is it not possible, for some of us, that our answer isn't here? College is not a cure-all. If it's not ourselves first, then what is the use of this place? You think we don't worry? That we don't ask ourselves these questions? We ask them, every one.
And maybe I'm mad to suddenly wonder if I wouldn't be happier the other way, the way that would have released me, recklessly unprepared, into a world that may or may not destroy me. Maybe I'm imagining things. Am I in love with insecurity? The arguments spurious, the words opaque. I just don't feel any more certain, I just don't see how I've conquered anything here.
And I think of Gertrude Stein and the American Expatriates staying up all night in Paris and writing their novels, and I think of Dorothy Parker and the Algonquin Round Table, all drowning in the mere stylish wit of themselves. But most of all I think of Emily Dickinson, dressed in white, walking around and around the large old empty house, watering some flowers and tidying up now and then, in perfect stoic silence while she lets the days and all the outside world pass her by.
I'm tearing my hair out sometimes and pounding my head on walls just out of the sheer suffocation of these dorms. And it's funny, too, 'cause I've always liked school in a way. It was sort of the one stabilizing thing in my life, and a kind of relief from the miserable pressure of living with my demanding family. And it's still that way now. As much as I burn out from the college overload, I dread going home for the long days of guilt-ridden nothingness and petty family frustrations. School is always my escape from my parents. The only thing is that there's no escape from school.
There's so many students around this campus who say their greatest aspiration is to become starving artists in New York, that their greatest desire is to get away to the peace of a little cabin in Switzerland where they can just breathe out, knit, sew, and cook, curling up to a simple conversation at a simple fire. It's such a beautiful picture, and this damn, degree-plagued blankness is such a stark contrast. Graduate school, internships, certification, tenure... does it never end?
Is this really it? Is this all I get of any chance at living? I am the last of the useless poets, I fear. I am the last of the obsolete fools who only used to survive by the mercy of their patrons in the old, old days. What is the point? What am I learning here? --Much, really, if I stop to admit it to myself. The obscurities of knowledge surprisingly enrich me piece by piece, in something close to spiritual sanity. But what of the future? What can these histories and quaint liberal arts do to throw the horrid vultures off my back? Where are the pleasantly assuring guideposts that lead to that safe little niche in life where I'm supposed to fit? There is no outlet, no way to scream....
--I'm stressfully balanced on a fine, taut edge. Sometimes, I have good days.
My friend just tells me the old Heisenberg Principle joke, "If I know where I am, I don't know where I'm going. If I know where I'm going, I don't know where I am." It's so absurd I laugh myself into tears, into sobs.